Banisher Reborn

by Deck Davis

  I got stronger every day. I was still nowhere near back to my best; the glory days when I was an up-and-comer were long gone, and my body had taken a few too many steps away from youth, but I could feel myself improving. I could feel my fat dissolve, my muscles grow.

  While I did this, I got to know my new home. It was a strange place, the bunker. We were cut off from everything above, and we rarely left it. It was like a twilight zone where reality didn’t exist. And yet, even so removed from society, I always had a nagging feeling tugging on me. I always had the stress of my responsibilities. Here I was, running around an old military bunker and learning how to fight demons I hadn’t even seen, and above, the deadline for paying my mortgage arrears drew closer.

  The Grandmaster only paid for banishments. There was no salary in this job. There was no HR department I could complain to about unfair treatment. I could have left then and there and gotten a job, but I knew I’d already invested too much of myself into this. I used to pace around at night, my footsteps echoing through the concrete tunnels, and I’d worry about Ruby, and it sounds stupid, but I’d pray for the spotters to tell us that a demon had taken a vessel.

  That sounds horrible; that I wanted someone, or something, to be forcibly invaded by an unworldly force. But I needed it. I needed my first banishment, I need the first taste of the lucrative payment Molly had promised me.

  And that was why I was happy when Molly told us the news.

  “We’ve got a dozen sheep dead in Penbrooke, just outside of Manchester,” she said. “Sides ripped open, guts and stuff torn out. We better take a look.”

  “How do we know what to look for?” I said.

  “Spotters saw a woman walking down the street the night it happened. She had blood all over her hands.”

  Chapter Six

  “They can’t help themselves,” said Wren.

  He was sitting in the passenger seat with Molly beside him. The car was a four-door hatchback; nothing to write home about, not that I was ever a car guy. It didn’t surprise me that the Grandmaster’s coffers didn’t extend to buying them a sports car or anything like that, especially when you considered that Molly and Wren lived in an old war bunker. Molly drove down the motorway at a steady 68 miles per hour, always sticking to a religious 2 miles below the speed limit. Speed tickets and traffic stops brought attention, and attention meant trouble.

  “In what way can’t they help themselves?” I said.

  “Imagine keeping a dog locked up in a cage twenty-three hours a day,” said Wren. “All that time, he’s itching to get out. The excitement bottles inside him, and pretty soon it turns to anger. When you finally unlatch the cage and let him out, what’s he going to do? He’ll go wild. He’ll indulge every impulse he had while he was stuck in the box.”

  “And that’s what demons do? That’s what this one did? Started ripping open sheep and spreading their guts everywhere?”

  “Depends on the demon, but yes, probably. If it wasn’t for the woman our spotters saw, I’d have put it down to a fox or something. But you can’t ignore omens.”

  Molly and Wren started an excited conversation about omens they’d seen in the past, and I was sitting in the back of the car feeling like an outsider. Even so, I found a little bit of comfort in just closing my eyes and hearing their voices fill the car. I guessed it was like how some old people kept the television set on even if they weren’t watching it. It was company for them, something that stopped them feeling lonely.

  Finally, Molly turned the car off the motorway and down a junction. After going left at a roundabout and taking a carriageway for four miles, she steered onto a country road.

  As soon as we hit that road, I felt the air change. The road itself was barely wide enough for cars to pass each other, and I wondered what would happen if a farmer’s jeep tried to pass us and ended up with scratches over the body work. The farmer would get out, red-faced and glaring at the outsiders who’d scratched his vehicle. Molly would try and explain that maybe he should have given way, and that it wasn’t our fault, but he’d be too stubborn. He’d start poking Molly in the chest. Then I’d have to stop in, and I’d…what? Use my fist of demon flesh and banish him?

  I looked at the glove on my left hand, covering my disfigured - but healed - fist. Molly said I wouldn’t have to wear it forever. As soon as the Grandmaster approved the expense and sent the funds, she’d buy the ingredients Wren needed to make a ward. This ward would change the way people saw my fist, apparently. Make it look normal to them. It’d never look normal to me, though.

  We didn’t run into any farmers as we took the twists and turns of the road. In fact, we didn’t see any cars at all. The whole place had an empty feel about it, since it was so far away from the city. Gone were the honks of cars, smoke from buses or the rumble of a tram travelling down its lines, or the steady hum of chatter of shoppers and commuters walking through city streets. The countryside was silent, and it was vast, and it was empty as empty could be.

  Being a city guy, it was hard to think that people lived out here all the time. Where did you go when you needed a beer after midnight? What about seeing a show, catching a movie, going to a restaurant? Maybe that was what drove people here – the absence of stuff like that. They liked the peaceful sounds of nature. The bleats of the sheep, the sound of a fence gate knocking against its fixings because it hasn’t been latched properly. Some people hated noise, some people needed it. Maybe I could see a reason for living here, after all.

  “Where exactly are we going?” said Wren.

  Molly tapped the sat-nav device fixed to the windshield. “A couple of minutes east.”

  “This is a dreary place.”

  “What did you expect? The spotter said a few sheep had been slaughtered. You don’t see sheep in the city.”

  “I can’t imagine why anyone lives around here.”

  “For the smell,” said Molly, and she wound the window down and let a gust of manure-scented air intoxicate the interior of the car.

  Wren coughed. I smiled to myself. Although I didn’t love the countryside and I doubted I’d ever settle here long-term, I was used to it. Back when I could afford it, I had used an old farmhouse and barn as a training camp for a big fight. I think it was in 2001, for my match again Ricky Button. Three cold months sleeping in an old cottage where the wind blew through cavities in the wall, and a stroppy old rooster had served as my alarm clock. The fact there were no bars, fast-food joints or clubs was the whole point. Complete concentration.

  That was then, this was now. I used to get nervous in the run up to fights, but nothing like the way I felt now. I guessed the buzzing in my stomach was a glimmer of fear, and it was born out of lack of knowledge. The fact was, I knew what to do in the ring. That was my area. Here, Wren and Molly were the pros, and I was the rookie. Beyond a vague knowledge that I needed Wren to figure out which demon it was so I could speak its true name and banish it, I didn’t know how this was going to go.

  That line of thinking led me to another, one that I’d already brought up with Molly.

  “Why me?” I had asked her, back in the bunker.

  “Why would we choose anyone else?”

  “I don’t get how you even knew about me. About the feeling I get.”

  “We have spotters, Josh. Not just for demons, either. You’re a fighting man, you’re in good shape, and more importantly, you feel things, don’t you?”

  That was as good an answer as I was going to get from her, but something didn’t sit right with me. Now, though, I had to forget it and focus on one thing; find this sheep-slaughtering demon and banish the hell out of it so I could send some money to Glora and Ruby.

  “Here we are,” said Molly.

  Turn right, and you have reached your destination, said the sat-nav.

  “I know,” said Molly.

  She took a right turn onto a long driveway. A few hundred yards at the end of it, there was a cottage. I leaned forward to get a better look, and I saw an ugly-
looking abode staring back at me. The place looked like it was ready to fall down, with weathered stone that had lived through a hundred storms. The roof was made of slate, and a few of the slates were missing. The windows were dark and had stringy curtains covering them. The garden had been left to go wild, and the closer we got, the darker and more ruined it looked, with wild tangles of nettles and thorn bushes, and piles of compost here and there, left to turn to mulch and stink the place out. If there was ever a cottage a demon would pick as its home, it was this one.

  The closer we got, the more I sensed something in the air. Something that went beyond the stink of the compost and the gloom of the countryside. I suddenly got the feeling of how remote this area was; the last house we’d passed was five minutes down the road by car, so at least thirty minutes on foot. There was probably no cell reception out here. No police, no people, no reassuring noise of civilization.

  “What would a spotter be doing out here?” I asked.

  “Some of them make a career out of it. They travel place to place hoping to see something. They know the Grandmaster pays well.”

  “What’s to stop them lying?”

  “Because they know he pays well, but they also know he’s not the sort of person to anger.”

  “You always call him ‘he’. Why is that?”

  “Just habit, I guess.”

  ‘You have reached your destination,’ said the sat-nav.

  “I know!” said Molly, jabbing the off button.

  She pulled the car to a stop. With the engine quiet, the silence really kicked in. We all felt it then. I could sense it, a kind of nervous tension between us.

  Wren unclipped his seatbelt and looked at me. “Whatever we find in there, whoever we find, don’t talk to it. Demons try and get in your head.”

  “And supposing this woman that the spotters saw is just a woman. How will you know otherwise?”

  “That’s your job. Use your demon eye.”

  “But how are you going to find out the demon’s name?”

  “That’s my job. I’ll talk to it, because I know their tricks. But you…I don’t want to be cruel, Joshua, but I don’t think it’s wise for you to try to play their mind games.”

  “Come on, boys,” said Molly.

  When we got out of the car and we stood outside the cottage, a well of fear bubbled in me. The car had been protection. Like the dog in the cage Wren had spoken about, I had been stuck inside the car, but it hadn’t been a prison - it had been protection. Now, without the metal surrounding me, I felt worried.

  If it was just nerves, I would have been fine. Show me a boxer who says he doesn’t feel nerves before a fight, I’ll show you a guy lying his ass off. There are ways to deal with nerves. But outright fear? That was something I hadn’t truly felt in years. Not since that night. Not since the wrong left hook on the wrong part of the wrong guy’s head, when I’d looked into the Babe’s eyes.

  Now, it was fight night all over again. Or fight day, as the case was. And this was my first, coming up against an enemy I’d never met before. This wasn’t a fellow boxer, a guy whose last fights I could watch and study, and work out his weaknesses. That was Wren’s job, and I just hoped he was up to it.

  I guessed in a way, being part of the hunters, being their Banisher, was kind of like having a corner. Instead of a coach and a cutman I had a Loremaster and a Cleanser. The comparison died there, though, because I wasn’t the star here. I was the newbie, the guy with the least experience and the least skills. So, how would I get over that? The same way I’d made my way in boxing, I guessed. Work hard and soak up everything my corner could tell me.

  As we approached the front door, Wren nodded to Molly. “You check the back.”

  “Right you are.”

  Wren reached for the door knocker, but I stopped him.

  “Wait.”

  “You sense something?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Well for God’s sake, be sure.”

  “Give me a break.”

  I held up my right hand. The little coin of demon flesh on my palm felt strange, but only when I pointed it at certain parts of the house. When I aimed it at the door, nothing. The downstairs windows, nothing. But when I pointed it at windows near the roof…

  Aura detected. Strength: 7%

  “It’s saying something about an aura,” I said.

  “What type?”

  “Type?”

  “Doesn’t it tell you?”

  “I…uh…”

  “Capgrove would have known.”

  I wanted to slug Wren at that point, but I forced some calm on myself. I tried to empathize. I remembered what Molly had said; Capgrove, their old Banisher, had been like a brother to this little book mite.

  I cast my demon eye over the rest of the house, but I picked up nothing else. When I lowered my hand, the voice spoke in my head again.

  Power accumulated: 8% [96% to level 2]

  Molly had told me about this. When I banished demons and their allied creatures with my fist, I accumulated power that I could spend upgrading my powers. It was the same with the demon eye on my hand; through successful use, I’d unlock more abilities. Detecting types of aura must have been one of them.

  Molly rejoined us. “Nothing at the back. The curtains are drawn, no sign of life.”

  “Our Banisher has detected something.”

  Molly raised her eyebrow at me, and I nodded. “Upstairs window.”

  “What strength?”

  “Seven per cent.”

  “Not a demon, then. At least, not a strong one. Still, we better be careful.”

  She knocked on the door. We waited. I wondered if the other two were as tense as me. Molly seemed fine, but Wren had his arms crossed tight against his chest.

  There was no answer, so Molly tried the door. It opened.

  “We’re just going in?”

  “We can’t mess about, Josh.”

  “And what if there isn’t a demon here? What if the woman is just a woman, and she finds us in her house? Hell, what if she’s sitting on the toilet right now and couldn’t get to the door in time, and we just walk in?”

  “That sort of thing is why we have a Cleanser,” said Wren.

  As soon as we stepped inside the cottage, a rush of foul air hit me. It smelled like rot, a putrid odor that could only have come from the microbes of death. Without it, the cottage would have been quaint. Sure, it was dark and it was cramped and there was mold on the walls, but it was an old-fashioned place, so what else could we have expected? In different times, in happier times, I imagined whoever owned the place sitting in the living room at night, a fire burning, its glow warding away the darkness. Maybe a dog would doze in front of it. A sheepdog, or something like that. A good, loyal breed. Its owner would throw it scraps from time to time, and that was how they’d wile away the hours, deep in comfort, protected from the elements.

  You know what? Maybe I could get used to the country. If I could ever pay off the house I would buy a place like this, and Rubes could come to stay. I’d get a dog and I’d name it Apollo after, to my mind, the best character in Rocky.

  Banish a few demons first, I told myself. Earn the money before you spend it.

  Despite the quaint image in my head, this cottage was far from it. The odor of death was hanging ripe in the air. A sickening smell, one that made me want to leave.

  Wren took something out of his pocket. It was a few sprigs of some kind of herb, and they were fastened by twine. He held it up like it was a sword. Then, he followed Molly through the house.

  “Josh, check the kitchen,” she told me. “We’ll take the living room.”

  “The aura was upstairs.”

  “I don’t want anything to sneak up on us.”

  We each check our designated rooms. I glanced into the kitchen. I saw the signs of habitation here; a few coffee granules scattered on a kitchen counter. Plates and cups soaking in a basin in the sink. There were flowers on the window, red and yellow one
s that I didn’t know the name of, and they smelled ripe when I went up close, but they couldn’t compete against the stench of rot.

  I held my demon eye out and waved it in an arc. The voice didn’t speak to me.

  Steps sounded outside. I left the kitchen and found Wren and Molly waiting for me.

  “Anything?”

  “Nothing.”

  Wren gulped. “Upstairs it is, then.”

  He said the words in a wavering voice. I guessed that Wren was at home with his books about demons, with learning their names and what they did. If Beelzebub liked long walks on the beach, Wren was happy to store that information in his head. But when it came to facing the real thing, maybe it scared him.

  “I’ll go first,” I said. I could read fear in the guy now, and it made me feel sorry for him. I wanted to reassure him a little, and even though tension was knotting deep inside me, I felt that going first would make him feel a little better. I’d take the lead, and Molly could bring up the rear, and our Loremaster could walk up between us.

  The stairs groaned underneath my weight. I’d once been a middleweight, but after letting myself go, I was bigger than that now. Even my laps around the bunker hadn’t shifted the excess cargo on my waistline. I took each one as carefully as I could, trying to hit the right spots, the places where I judged the stairs wouldn’t cry out under the weight of my feet.

  At the top, I faced a narrow hallway. There were three doors, all of them shut. I held my demon eye out to face each one in turn. I pointed it at the door to my left. Nothing. Then at the one to my right. Nothing. Finally, I pointed it at the door at the end of the hallway.

  Aura detected. Strength: 9%

  Power accumulated: 16% [84% to level 2]

  “The aura strength has increased,” I said. “Up two percent from last time. What does that mean?”

  I glanced behind me at Wren and saw the worry in his face. “Something is growing,” he said. “Or spreading.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind,” said Molly. “Push on.”